


[i will never say goodbye]

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: [to see you there] [28]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: CPTSD, Clint Barton Has Issues, Natalia Romanova has Issues, Natasha's Psychological Expertise, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, exciting coping mechanisms, idiosyncratic relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-24 01:36:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13800618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: Clint asks, "Why did you have to adopt two fucking Catholics?" in an almost-plaintive voice, turning his head slightly. It takes her a little by surprise - thewordingdoes, anyway, the exact shape of the plaint - and Natalia chokes a little on the laugh.





	[i will never say goodbye]

**Author's Note:**

> Immediate subsequent [lending a hand](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11221326) and [please don't make any sudden moves](archiveofourown.org/works/11946792%22). 
> 
> cn for references to RACK blade-play.

One of the few advantages of having a head as messed up as hers, Natalia considers, is that even when she has an object she really _likes_ , she doesn't really care what happens to it. . . as long as she can replace it. 

Other people get attached to objects, to _things_ , imbue them with some kind of odd half-life. It gets so that even if they could get a perfect duplicate they still feel sad that it's not _the exact couch_ that they'd had for the last two years, or the _specific teapot_ their grandmother left to them. 

Sad, or even _guilty_ , like somehow the object's alive and feels bad about being thrown away. Or as if some part of their grandmother's soul could get attached to it, and throwing it away means throwing the soul away. 

Natalia . . . doesn't have that problem. To put it mildly. It doesn't even really make sense to her, as a problem to have. 

She's accepted that other people do, that this is part of the way normal people's minds and emotions attach to things. She can even sort of see why the ways she doesn't are all connected to the other ways she can't operate the way other people do - to the way that if she tried to make intimacy work the way that even Maria did, or Pepper, or Bruce did, the end result would be - 

The best you can say is _unfortunate_. And that's being pretty fucking coy. 

But the upside is that when Clint's blood ends up on the chaise in her bedroom, it's not a big deal: even if it doesn't wash out, or if for some reason an upholsterer can't fix that piece without it being the same as remaking the whole thing, she can just replace the chaise and she won't really care. It's just an object. Those are replaceable. 

Thank fuck. If she had to worry about things being as irreplaceable as people she might actually lose her mind. 

Right now Clint's leaning on the side of the tub in her ensuite while Natalia puts Neosporin on the shallow parallel cuts she left on his ribcage and tapes narrow bits of gauze over the ones she thinks are likely to get blood on whatever shirt he wants to put on next. 

None of them are deep enough that they'll even leave a mark once they've healed, given the sharpness of the razor she used, but it'll be an hour or so before she'd be willing to bet they won't leak. 

As she puts the medical tape aside Clint starts to sit up; Natalia stops him with one hand to the skin between his shoulders. "Hang on," she says. "I got more of the topical stuff and your lower back is going to try to _kill_ you in about an hour." 

Clint acknowledges that by raising his hand and rests his forehead on his forearms again, while Natalia gets the tube of topical diclofenac out of its box. For good measure she applies it to more or less anywhere on his back that _doesn't_ have broken skin, because there's basically no downside and a lot of reason to expect every muscle in his back to start lodging complaints as soon as they have a hope in hell of being heard. The stuff should probably go on his knees and maybe his hips, too, being as it's a hell of a lot better for his stomach than eating pills, but that can wait a little. 

She wipes the residue off her hands - this stuff is the worst for that - and then as Clint sits up and slides his legs out from under himself, off his knees, she catches his shoulder and pulls him to lie back. Guides his head down to rest on her thigh, as she crosses her legs. He winces as gravity finishes settling him. 

"I'm pretty sure I was supposed to die young before now," he grouses, and Natalia snorts. She pulls his ear, gently. 

"It's not like people haven't tried pretty fucking hard, Barton," she reminds him. "You're the one who never cooperates." 

"I don't think they're fucking trying," he mutters. "I think they're phoning it in. They didn't even fucking manage it when I _was_ half-cooperating," and it's admittedly nice that 20-fucking-13 is far enough away that it can be funny for both of them, so Natalia just shakes her head. Clint grouses, "What the fuck is wrong with people. I mean come on, fucking demon alien-things should definitely have managed to kill my stupid reckless ass. I had a fucking concussion. I hadn't slept in two days. What the fuck." 

She shakes her head again, half-smiling, but lets it lie. 

Natalia leans back on her hands. Her hair's still wet from the shower, but it's so short now it's not dripping on her shirt, and that still feels strange. She doesn't notice it all that often, because she's usually reaching for the hair-dryer as soon as she towels off, but when it does catch her, it's . . . odd. 

It's the shortest her hair's ever been. Longer is easier to adapt to new needs, to change silhouette by a shifting a few different layers, a few different details: before now anything above her shoulders usually came from something going . . . unfortunately. 

Like half of it getting badly singed. That'd been the reason, the last time it'd gone above her chin. Gem in Wardrobe had been _tragic_ about it, the way Gem always was. But at least it'd only been Natalia's hair, not the side of her face, and she'd only had to cut it to about chin level and then stick to textured styles to cover up the few ragged ends. 

It'd still been adjustable, and it hadn't taken that long to grow out. 

At this point the only way for Natalia to change up the shape enough to make a difference is either a wig, or taking it _all_ off. 

The experiment still feels a little exposed, irrationally, aggravatingly; makes timing for tonight nice for her, too. 

. . . granted there's only a very _few_ times this kind of play isn't, at least with the right partner - and here that's beyond question - but that's not the point. 

The session's also done what it was supposed to: the sharp, too-brilliant edges she was starting to see all over Clint's everything, there in front of Steve's building, are all slid back away; the lizard-brain edginess at having his face rubbed in being invested in people dulled down again. 

Speaking of how people can and can't attach, and what it does, and what it means. 

As a point of synchronicity, Clint asks, "Why did you have to adopt two fucking Catholics?" in an almost-plaintive voice, turning his head slightly. It takes her a little by surprise - the _wording_ does, anyway, the exact shape of the plaint - and Natalia chokes a little on the laugh. 

"That's the kind of blind spot you get from a fanatical Soviet childhood," she retorts. "You forget to grill people on their religion before you make friends." 

"Jesus fucking Christ," Clint mutters. "Maybe literally. I thought Steve's martyr complex was bad. But I gotta fucking tell you the student's got fucking nothing on the master here." 

"Trust me," Natalia replies, mildly. "I've noticed." 

"You know he was watching me the whole time I was talking to those kids, too," Clint adds, and Natalia shakes her head - not in denial, but as a sort of silent sigh.

"Mmhm," she says. "But I'll bet you hard money he made sure it looked like he'd been lying down somewhere else the whole time before Steve got up to the condo. And if it makes you feel better," she adds, hand sliding over to grip his ear again, but gently this time, "he _wasn't_ watching you like he thought he'd have to do anything. If he'd been worried about it, he'd've made sure not only you knew he was watching, but his little protégée did too, so she'd know she had backup. He probably just heard her voice and went to see what was up - I don't think he can help it." 

There's a beat, and then Clint says, "I shouldn't have alcohol yet," in the wistful voice of someone who kind of hopes the other person will disagree, but knows they probably aren't going to. And Natalia doesn't. 

"Not unless you've come up with a magic way to sleep eight hours and eat a whole set of two meals before travelling back in time so fast to get back here that I don't even notice you're gone," she replies, and lets there be a warning edge because he should know better than to even think about it. Alcohol's not the _worst_ possible thing to add to the psychological state he just spent a couple hours chasing, but it's got a solid place on the list with the title _all of these are so bad we're not going to bother ranking them further_. 

"You know," he says thoughtfully, "there's probably something in this universe that would actually let you do that - " and Natalia flicks his ear this time. 

"Don't think up nightmare fuel," she says, "or I'll put you to bed. Besides, I asked Thor about time travel already, and he says not that he knows of. And no, he doesn't know everything, but you'd think time-rewriting machines would be top of the weapons list." 

"Point," Clint acknowledges. He sighs. "Tell me you have fancy-tasting sodas, at least." 

"Barton," she replies, very patiently, "I always have fancy sodas." 

 

It does occur to Natalia that, earlier thoughts about the replaceability of objects aside, it would probably be a bit disappointing if the salon divan-sofa got wrecked, because it probably _would_ be hard to replace. It'd been an accidental artisanal find in the first place: perfectly matched to the rest of her furniture, but built so it's kind of a welcoming, half-hexagon nest. 

It's admittedly difficult to find furniture in her Tower-home style that feels like a welcoming nest. She'd have to get it bespoke made, which is always more fuss. 

On the other hand there's not much in the way of reasons it would get wrecked, so she's not about to worry about it. 

This is the only kind of time that Clint gets really tactile. Other times, even if one, the other, or both of them needs _closeness_ , he's not actively touchy and Natalia doesn't really know how to be. It's not that she doesn't like touch. It's just . . . never natural, never spontaneous, even for whatever value of spontaneous anything she ever does is. 

It doesn't occur to her that it's something she wants even when it turns out her psyche could, in fact, use her getting a fucking hug. 

For Clint, it's really natural and it would be spontaneous if he wasn't really careful - and that's why he _is_ , why he doesn't do it, closing down so much that for most of the time he doesn't even notice the lack. Emotional touch gets right under his skin, so he avoids it as a matter of course. 

It's fine; it works. Melinda once summed it up, in a mordant tone of voice, as _Barton is a 'with' cat, not an 'on' cat._

She'd had to explain that one, because the fine details of how people interact with pets hadn't really been part of Natalia's education. She'd been talking about how some cats will sit on your lap, where other cats never will - even if they like you, even if they want affection from you, even if they're really attached to you. They'll sit _with_ you - beside you, by your feet, on a shelf above you, across the room, even right by you on a couch. But they won't be on you, and if you try to make them, it'll just disrupt the whole thing. 

It's not a bad way of describing Clint, ninety-nine percent of the time. 

The one percent always comes out in these kinds of moments, though, so she settles on the salon divan-sofa in a way that lets him curl up and use her stomach as a pillow while he drinks the lemon-sage-juniper soda, eats broken up pieces of the dense homemade energy bar she made him get when he got the soda, and they both wait for their heads to wind back down enough that sleep is something that can happen. 

There's also an unspoken conversation they're not having and it hangs in the silent room. It's the kind of thing that happens. People used to complain about it, sometimes, how they could talk or even argue without actually saying a word. 

This conversation's the one where he gives in and accuses her of manipulating him into a position where he'll have to actually get emotionally invested in Steve and James and get attached in exactly the ways he tends to avoid if he can - because they hurt. 

And where she then tells him that's paranoid bullshit because in case he hadn't noticed _she'd already been blindsided by that one_ , it's not actually manipulation if it comes down to the fact that the only way to avoid it is to go away and leave her on her own and it's not _her_ fault he refuses to fucking do that, that's _his_ choice, and has always been his choice, so that one's on his own fucking head.

That just because she saw it coming six miles away doesn't mean she had a damn thing to do with making it happen. 

And where he apologizes, because it's true, and he didn't actually mean it anyway, he's just really fucking compromised now and he _doesn't like it_ , and where she retorts that he fucking knows he's been walking a pretty fucking fine line of being so shut down he starts to go cold, has been ever since fucking New York and Phil Coulson dying and then started _losing his balance_ since Insight, and he's had just about two damn years to start sorting that out some other way, and he didn't, _and_ he was playing the denial card hard enough he didn't see this coming and he knows that's a fucking bad idea, so now he can just fucking cope. 

And where she also points out how besides, while they might be the biggest damn emotional _disaster area_ on the continent, and that's even counting the fact that Tony Stark is and forever will be an oscillating ever-renewing emotional disaster area, the gift that keeps on giving, but Steve and James are also loyal as damn fucking puppies and the least likely people Natalia can think of to end up twisted around so that they drag _him_ into something that violates his ethics. 

(And most people wouldn't think that's something Clint Barton thinks about, but he fools most of the people all of the time, and she knows better.) 

So as far as people to get attached to the fact of the matter is they're probably _safer_ than anyone at SHIELD was, even, because the worst that'll happen is they'll get themselves killed. 

And where he admits that and it eventually all comes down to some words that both hide and outline the shape of a really simple thought, which is _getting attached to people hurts, and I hate it._

And she'll grant him that one, willingly, because it does and there's nothing she can do about it. If she could, she would. 

(If you didn't know much about how people work, you might get confused about why someone who hates it does it so fucking often, but Natalia is not confused about how people work.)

They don't have the conversation, because they don't need to, just like they didn't have any conversations - out loud - about how Nick's psychopathologies, stresses, psychological injuries and related mistakes aren't Maria's fault. 

Or how that still didn't do fuck all for how Natalia's head was messed up about Maria for so long, or how much she hated that, and how there wasn't anything to do about it but wait and make sure she kept remembering where responsibility did and didn't lie, and hope it unbent enough to move on. 

They're the kind of conversations where at this point actually having them is sometimes a worse idea than moving to the place where they both know how it ended, and sometimes - like now - finding a way to vent the feelings that come with it, all tangled up. 

There's a lot of ways. They've been doing this for a while. Different ways for different stuff, depending on what kind of pressure's building up. A lot of them are tangled up with sex and violence, because humans are like that, even when they don't know it. And then some of them are mostly about power, and rest, because Clint's backbrain has a really, really hard time believing he can actually drop everything he carries all the damn time without it all going horribly wrong. 

Natalia's fairly sure it's why he could never make a relationship last - a normal one, anyway. That and everything else. But . . . a lot of it just . . . that. 

Hard enough to get him to invest in the first place, but the rest - if you're most people, it's like trying to open a box with the key that's already inside.

Clint breaks the silence with, "You know anything about that girl? The nervous one," and Natalia blinks, the question pulling her out of her thoughts. She tries to remember. 

"Nothing more than what Steve told you," she says, after a minute. "And what's there to see. I'll admit I'm surprised even you managed to charm Miss Sandoval long enough for you to get a _chance_ to charm her friend." 

Clint acknowledges that with a small smile and a slight shake of his head, as he takes another mouthful of the energy bar. "That kid is hilarious. And we met, when I got the time-out from the meeting. And you're right, even that and a half-hour conversation over her playing with the kitten almost wasn't enough - the other girl, Hannah, saw _strange adult male_ , went to flight mode, and I just about got a barely-polite apology about being busy. 

"Which would've been fine," he adds. "But apparently magic tricks are still enough of a pull, so she hesitated long enough for Hannah to decide I wasn't going to do anything horrible right there and then." 

"All three of them look out for each other," Natalia tells him, "them and their other friend. It's sweet." 

"What's the other one like?" Clint asks, and Natalia's half-smile turns wry. 

"She's the normal one," she says, and Clint winces. 

"Fuck, poor kid," he says, and Natalia says _mmhm_. "She's the one that picked up the litter of kittens in the first place," he says, not quite a question, and Natalia _mmhm_ 's again. 

They're quiet for a bit, and Natalia finally starts to feel the _edges_ of what might be called drowsiness - at least in a while, if she doesn't scare it away. 

Then Clint says, "You know Barnes has basically no defenses, right," in a voice that's a lot less light, and a lot more like this has been niggling at him. "Not even against you, the irritable act notwithstanding - I mean it's a bit of masking, but that's all.

"Otherwise," Clint goes on, "just about anyone who fucking stands still long enough for him to notice they're not doing something that makes him actively hate them and want them off this planet . . . could basically ask anything and he'd try until it knocked him off the deep end and he went into straight-up animal panic. Make it so he actually _likes_ you - " 

"And he doesn't get to panic," Natalia finishes quietly, "just catatonia. I know. For what it's worth I think he does, too - it's why he's still so wary about people, even when he's so fucking desperate to be around them. And he is," she adds. "Everything Steve's ever said paints a picture of a guy who used to make you look like an introvert." 

"You know," Clint says, conversationally, shifting and passing her the empty soda bottle because he can't reach the floor or a table from where he is, "for the longest time I couldn't figure out how the hell Steve Rogers was how he was."

Natalia makes a small interrogatory noise, and he shrugs. 

"Not big stuff. Noble spirit is noble spirit, whatever, some people have more than is good for them -" he waves a hand dismissively and Natalia coughs a little bit of her laughter into her ginger tea.

Someday she's got to tell Steve he's lucky Clint actually does like him, has more or less liked him from the get-go. Because if he hadn't, especially the way Steve was _before_ James - 

Most people who came off like Steve did, Clint needles until they explode unless he's got a really good reason not to. It's like he can't help himself. 

He can, of course. He just doesn't bother.

"I mean the little tells," Clint goes on. "He didn't have any of them, doesn't have any of them. Instead it's like - sure, he got beat up a lot when he was scrawny and he's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder about it, but beyond that, the way he interacts with _people_ the guy could have grown up across the street from Maria, same kind of life, same kind of nice family that never really worried about anything." 

Natalia tilts her head to one side - she knows what he means. It's not like Maria's naive, it's not like Maria doesn't know how to keep people from exploiting her, getting at her, but it's not built in. It's not ground in, not painted on her. You can't see it coming from her bones the way you can with, say, Tony. Or Clint. 

Or, Natalia knows, herself, when she lets that stuff show. 

"And that's just about nuts - you're a kid," Clint says, "and you're sick all the time, and you're poor, and not just poor but right on the knife-edge of starving, of getting kicked out, and your mom's not around half the time because she has to work to keep you alive, and you've got no other family, no . . .place, in the community, no shields, but you're fucking surrounded by these institutions, like the fucking _Catholic Church_ let's just even fucking start there, but the rest of them too - the cops, the gangs, whatever?" 

He shakes his head again. 

"You get fucked up. People use you - hell they end up using you by accident, they don't even mean to, they're just not thinking or they just forget how to think about you like a real fucking human being. They roll over you, they just . . .I have known saints come out of that shit, I grew up in that shit, but even the saints don't come out of it without it _showing_. That . . .open and that kind of straight-forward. That outraged by manipulation - _rage_ , sure, but it's too familiar, you just get angry, you don't get offended and shocked." 

He shrugs. "I had to chalk it up to a fluke: in this one way Steve Rogers got stupidly lucky. Really, really rare, but it happens." 

"It happens," Natalia agrees. 

Because it does, both ways: the little flukes where everything wrong somehow doesn't stick, and where every protection in the world doesn't stop the metaphorical bullet. It does happen. But it still sticks out when it does, it still jars, it's still _like_ the moment that the random number generator spits out pi to the twelfth decimal. You notice. 

She can see what Clint means. It didn't stick out for her, as much, but for her it's a minor background detail, and she was never quite treating Steve like a mark. For Clint it'd be looking for stuff they should share, stuff that should feel like they came from the same world, and . . . not finding it. 

"But - ?" she asks, just to nudge it through - she thinks he might be getting sleepy, which is good, but means sometimes he loses track of what he was saying. And the breath he takes is a little deeper, which suggests she's right. 

He lets it out in a half-laugh. "I mean I wasn't wrong," he replies, a little wry, a little amused. "Just the luck was all in one person. And _that_ made sense. That snapped it all in place - that happens plenty of times. Usually it's brothers or sisters, there's one who makes it their job to make sure that someone doesn't have to learn anything the hard way, the way that makes the lesson come with a flinch every time you remember it." 

This time the exhale comes with the echo of a sigh. "Parents can't do it," he says, "not . . . in setups like that. Even if they want to. They can't stick close enough to pull it off without being so close they smother, and smothering doesn't help. It kinda has to be another kid. So then it made sense." 

Natalia absorbs that for a second, and thinks about it. Thinks about where that kind of observation comes from, and then notes, "The only reason that wasn't you is you weren't born first," because he's going to ignore that if she doesn't point it out. 

And she's not going to get into any more detail, because she leaves what she's managed to dig out of the past and of his family story the hell alone as much as she can. 

"Goddamnit it, Tasha, you weren't supposed to point that out," he says, and he's three quarters joking. "You're supposed to just leave it in Significant Silence. That's good manners." 

"Says who?" she retorts. "I'm not wrong." 

"You're not," he says, and she's actually surprised and maybe a little proud of him. 

It means she leaves it there, running her fingertips through his hair, back from his face. 

Then she says, "You need to go to sleep," which stands in for saying she needs to go to sleep, too. 

Clint doesn't argue, just pushes himself up to sitting with a very slight groan and a wince. "Y'know," he says, rubbing his neck, "someday I actually am going to be too fucking old for this shit, and then I'm gonna be in trouble." 

Natalia stands up and musses his hair. "Maybe Tony will make you an invincible robot body," she says, sweetly, and laughs at the expression that gets scrunching up Clint's face. 

"Do me a favour and never, ever mention that to him," Clint says, not joking at all. "The only thing worse than him accidentally making Skynet would be him accidentally making the Borg." 

 

After the lights are off, curled behind her with one arm around her waist, Clint eventually says, "I'm sorry," in a quiet voice he might actually be hoping she's too asleep to hear. 

She isn't. And she knows what he means, and she's apologized like that herself, and she also knows it's bullshit and so does he, so she half-turns her head in a gesture towards looking at him and says, "Seriously, Barton? Seriously?" 

"I'm pretty sure I got blood on your chaise," Clint says mildly, like that's what he fucking meant for a second, and she rolls her eyes even though he can't see, even though it's all a performance. 

"Barton, the way this shit works, _I_ got your blood on my chaise," she retorts. "And you know that. And I can get another one. Go to sleep." 

He says, "Yes'm," with mock-meek solemnity because it's always less awkward to step away from these things, at the end. 

There's a non-zero chance she'll remember in the morning how many of her own defense mechanisms she took down, for the conversations they just had - silent and spoken - and the emotional hangover's going to be miserable. But there's a non-zero chance she'll duck it, if she finds something to keep busy with. Like fighting with Tony over her wristlets. 

Natalia makes a mental note as she starts the breathing exercises she'll probably need to sleep.


End file.
